Website Contributors at East Carolina University Discover, Share, Develop

This was a huge upgrade for both the backend administration and the contributor interface. There have been many changes for all of us. We know you have experienced quite a learning curve getting up to speed with this new version. We appreciate your efforts.

From the backend of CommonSpot, quite a few items were completed starting with the servers that were upgraded from 32 bit to 64 bit, then the databases were switched to UTF-8, followed by ColdFusion being upgraded from v8 to v9, and finally we could upgrade CommonSpot from v5 to v7. Wow, that was a lot!

For all of you, our contributors, you were presented with an entirely new interface to learn. Plus, there were strict browser requirements to get used to. As you report issues to us, we are finding solutions or contacting the vendor for a solution. We appreciate your patience as we work through these issues. We have fixed many of them, but there are still a few outstanding.

Outstanding Issues

Here are the issues that you have reported that are currently outstanding.

When you are editing a page and click on a link in a Formatted Text box, it doesn’t take you to the page. In the previous version, clicking the link would take you to the page. Currently, you can use the Tools>>Find or Reports>>Pages, Templates, Uploaded Documents. We are contacting the vendor for a solution.

Occasionally the browser window greys out. Reloading the page is required. We are contacting the vendor for a solution.

Occasionally “MyCommonSpot” tab bar disappears. Reloading the page is required. We are contacting the vendor for a solution.

Adding words to the dictionary gives an error in IE9. We are working on this.

Occasionally logging in using IE9 doesn’t work. We are contacting the vendor for a solution.

Occasionally on the 770 wide templates, pages are being cached in the “Printer Friendly” view. “Printer Friendly” is currently disabled. We are contacting the vendor for a solution.

Here are a few solutions, enhancements and best practices we would like to share with you.

Solutions

When using a 960 theme, switching themes will show a link to “return to previous page”. Clicking this link fixes the problem.

When viewing a page that you want to edit and the URL starts with www.ecu.edu, change “www” to “author”. This will take you to the page on the author server where you can login to make changes.

If you have a simple form that was created by someone else and you aren’t able to edit the form fields, contact us. We will need to change your permissions for the form.

Enhancements

Login button added. When viewing a page you want to edit and the URL starts with author.ecu.edu, you should see a “Login” button in the top left beside the “ECU word mark” (logo). Click this button to login.

Subsite Tools button added. Once you are logged in to author a page, you should see a “Subsite Tools” button in the top left beside the “ECU word mark”.

Submit Ticket added to Subsite Tools. Once on the Subsite Tools page, you will see a “Submit Ticket” button. This will allow you to quickly submit a ticket to us regarding a page that you are having difficulty with.

Responsive Design has been implemented on all 960 pages. This will allow pages to be displayed properly for all devices whether it is a mobile phone or a desktop browser.

Best Practices

Be sure to use one the supported browsers for contributing/authoring/editing in CommonSpot. See list of vendor-supported versions. Most of the problems we have encountered were because an unsupported browser was being used.

When you are experiencing a problem, try the following:

Clear your browser cookies and cache

Reload the page and force your browser to bypass the local cache. Follow the directions for your specific browser below:

Chrome

Windows: Hold down the Ctrl key and press the F5 key.

Mac: Hold down the Cmd key and press the R key.

Firefox

Windows: Hold down the Ctrl key and press the F5 key.

Mac: Hold down the Cmd key and press the F5 key.

Internet Explorer

Hold down the Ctrl key and press the F5 key.

Safari

Hold down the Shift key and press the Reload toolbar button.

Resize your images before uploading to CommonSpot. This will improve the load time of the page.

If you have suggestions for other solutions or enhancements, please feel free to share them with us by sending us an email, or posting on yammer. Using yammer to share information is helpful. If you are having an issue, be sure to put in a ticket as we do not monitor yammer like we do the ticketing system.

If you are having an issue, please submit a ticket using either the new ticket location mentioned above or via the Help Desk at ithelp.ecu.edu

Again, thank you for your patience and please continue to share your feedback with us so we can continue to improve.

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Information, resources and opinions shared are meant to keep everyone abreast of developments in the ever-evolving field of technology and are not necessarily endorsed by Information Technology and Computing Services or East Carolina University.

Before using any of these tools, please check with your IT Contact or ITCS.